


i liked it better when you were on my side

by rxpunzels



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hockey AU, M/M, hey bucky do u want some fries with your salt, i watched the mighty ducks and then THIS was born
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-09 23:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18648040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxpunzels/pseuds/rxpunzels
Summary: Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and the hockey rink. But when a childhood accident has Bucky hanging up his skates, it also marks the end of his friendship with Steve. Until ten years later when they need to play on the same scrappy, bottom-of-the-league team. Bucky can't wait for this season to be over.





	1. the friends you have when you're fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me kick this right off by saying that my hockey knowledge doesn't extend beyond the mighty ducks, beartown by fredrik backman, check, please! and iconic DCOM go figure. but on the other hand i'm well-versed in slow-burn tropes and characters who are fueled by pettiness so i feel like that sort of makes up for it.

The sound of pucks clattering off sticks is second nature to Bucky; he’s so attuned to it that he doesn’t think about looking up, too busy wrapping tape around his own stick, hoping it’ll keep the splintered wood from completely falling apart. There’s no way he can afford a new one, not when Hanukkah’s past and his parents already paid too much to get him this one secondhand. His fingers wind themselves around the tape, tugging at it, all the while trying not to let themselves stiffen up as the cold stubbornly bites at them. He’s so engrossed in his task that he nearly misses the commotion. ‘Nearly’ being the keyword.

He’s used to hearing the other kids slamming their pucks (real and makeshift) at each other and he’s also – painfully and unfortunately – accustomed to the sound of a body hitting the ground of the rink, followed by a familiar and frustrated grunt that means trouble is imminent. This time, he actually looks up.

Just as he expected, he sees Steve, lying crumpled on the ice. His first instinct is to panic, because Steve’s skinny as shit and he looks pretty much broken sprawled there on the floor. But he also knows Steve better than he knows anyone else and to Bucky’s well-trained eye, Steve isn’t as hurt as he seems. He doesn’t immediately zone into the pained frown on the other teenager’s face – instead, he sees a hand curling into a fist and a flash of anger in his friend’s eyes as he directs a glare at his tormentors.

“Shit,” he mutters to himself. He knows he’s fast (there’s a reason he’s always at the top of the roster when the neighbourhood kids start picking teams) but he’s also palpably aware of the fact that even he isn’t quick enough to get himself off his ass, across the snow and onto the rink before Steve goes and runs his damn mouth.

Sure enough, Steve picks himself up and turns to scowl at the group of boys laughing. Bucky doesn’t know whose turn it was to collide with Steve this time, but he’s confident that there’s not one of them that’s blameless.

“That make you feel better, pal?” he hears Steve say. Even at fourteen, Steve’s somehow cultivated his own brand of trash talk that’s so exceedingly polite it borders on being downright condescending. Bucky knows that wasn’t by accident.

The other guys, unaware that they’re being patronised, crack up. And Bucky knows it’s time to shift. He’s so busy making sure his stick is left somewhere safe (because he wouldn’t put it past some other kid to grab it for themselves and Steve’s gotten his ass handed to him enough times before that it’s no longer a novelty which takes precedence over Bucky being in possession of a good hockey stick) and getting onto the ice that he misses what’s said next, but by the time he’s reached the other guys, Steve’s currently in a headlock with blood streaming from his nose. Judging by the fresh scrapes on his knuckles though, he got a few hits in.

“My fucking braces!” One of the other guys has his hands clapped over a split lip and Steve looks more smug than anyone rightfully should when they’re three seconds away from having a hockey puck hurled at their face.

“You little-”

“Break it up, boys,” Bucky says, skating over and coming to a sharp halt in front of the huddle, kicking up a spray of ice in his wake.

“C’mon, Barnes. This little twerp needs a good ass-kickin’,” pipes up the guy who still has Steve’s head tucked neatly under his arm. But his hold loosens a little when he catches the look on Bucky’s face.

Skating closer, slowly and purposefully until he’s practically toe to toe with the acne-ridden boy, Bucky gives him a look which makes it clear that he doesn’t want to repeat himself but he does it anyway. “I said – break. It. Up.”

Bucky isn’t known as a fighter. Unlike Steve, his fists don’t start swinging when someone so much as looks at him the wrong way and as tough as he is on the ice, he’d rather spend his free time reading up on NASA’s latest discoveries than sharpening his right hook. Without his skates, he’s everything that people expect Steve to be. But because he has the luxury of towering a few inches over the rest of everyone in the eighth grade, he’s never the butt of a practical joke. Not like Steve who’s the perfect punchbag for middle school bullies, all because his lungs have the tendency to rattle like a broken-down car engine and he looks like a slight breeze could bowl him over.

Still, despite having zero desire to go around knocking people’s teeth out, he continuously finds himself in confrontational situations which he’s boiled down to being collateral when you’re best friends with Steve Rogers.

Not that he’d change it for the world, but Steve doesn’t need to know that. And Bucky’s too damn scared to make it public knowledge that he’d fight God himself for the skinny little smartass with no sense of self preservation.

Sometimes, he doesn’t think he does such a good job of hiding it though, because, soon enough, Steve’s free from the chokehold and the group’s ringleader is shepherding the rest of the gang away, over to another area of the ice where they won’t be subject to the thundering expression on Bucky’s face.

“Yeah, that’s what I… thought,” Steve manages to wheeze, coughing out what Bucky supposes is meant to be a triumphant laugh and tugging at the collar of shirt so it isn’t as constricting around his throat which is already fighting against the sharp winter air to drink in a breath. He’s red in the face and barely standing straight and Bucky would feel sorry for him if he wasn’t fully aware that Steve would go hairy about being pitied. Plus, he’s kind of pissed at Steve.

“Can’t I turn my back for one second without you trying to fight half of fuckin’ Brooklyn?” he asks, suppressing the urge to cuff Steve around the back of the head. Instead, he just leans down to pick up Steve’s hockey stick which miraculously hasn’t been broken. He shoves it into his friend’s hand.

“I had him!” Steve argues.

“In what? Cuffs for landing you in a coma?” Bucky retorts. “Ever think of just starting on someone your own size? Look, there’s a group of eight-year-olds over there who’ll eat your fists.”

Steve doesn’t even bother looking, just uses his stick to swipe at Bucky’s feet. They both know he couldn’t trip him if he tried, but Bucky graciously dodges out the way anyway.

“Punk.” He’s grinning.

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Jerk.” He’s grinning too.

Slinging an arm around Steve’s shoulders, Bucky kids himself that he’s gotten used to the way his heart lurches in his chest when Steve’s own arm slides around his back. Bucky can keep his cool when his coach is yelling at him to ‘stay focused, Barnes!’ as the countdown clock glares at him, the claxon bell threatening to ring out before he can send the puck flying past some other nameless kid trying to make his coach proud as well, and into the goal. He’s nothing but level-headed when he’s on the ice, but when it comes to Steve fucking Rogers he’s about as cool as a goddamn Fourth of July barbecue.

“Come on, we said we were gonna practise.” He skates away from Steve. “If we finally nail the Cyclone you might not be a duster for the rest of the season.”

Steve’s face adopts a steely look of determination, just like Bucky knew it would. There was nothing that grated on Steve’s nerves more than the threat of being benched for the rest of their games, even though their coach had once helpfully and not at all rudely informed Steve that collecting dust on the bench was all he was good for. Bucky, who was a polite as they came when talking to adults, had at long last brought his winning streak of not cussing at authority figures to an end that day. He’d had to join Steve on the bench for the rest of the week, but it had been worth it.

The Cyclone is a play they’ve been working on ever since Bucky realised that Steve’s willingness to recklessly throw himself around on the ice like a man possessed might actually work in their favour. If the opposing team saw him as an open invitation to be checked then they would be sure to pick up enough speed to skate full pelt at him, only for him to breakaway at the very last second with the agility and grace of a freaking figure skater and let Bucky pass him the puck. They’ve been at it for a while since, despite Steve being nimble enough to dart under and out of the clutches of bigger players, his hand-eye co-ordination left a lot to be desired.

No matter how many times, he misses the puck though, he still insists they try again and Bucky can’t help but admire that sort of unwavering determination. Plus, it gives him an excuse to cover Steve’s hands with his own wind-bitten fingers, moving them along the stick until they’re in the right position and only letting his hands linger for as long as any heterosexual fifteen-year-old’s hands had any right to. It’s as good an excuse as any for Bucky to stay close to Steve without it being weird.

“Yeah, let’s do the Cyclone,” Steve agrees, gripping his stick and setting his jaw. “This seem about right?”

“You’re going to break a fucking wrist if you slam a puck with your hands like that,” Bucky comments.

Steve glances down at his hands and narrows his eyes, as if personally affronted that his skinny, exposed wrists are doing nothing to prove Bucky wrong. “Then how _should_ I be holding it?”

Pausing for a few seconds to contemplate how long it’s going to be before Steve Rogers finally succeeds in fucking killing him, Bucky moves behind Steve and leans forward, arms sliding past Steve’s bony shoulders so he can envelop the other boy’s smaller hands with his own, lightly guiding them to where they should be so Steve’s bones won’t shatter on impact if his stick manages to hit something. “There you go,” he says, his voice catching when he realises how damn soft his tone is. He lets go of Steve and retreats quickly, amending his words by muttering, “Fuckin’ idiot.”

Steve just grins. “Okay, where’s your stick?” 

“Left it over there while you were busy trying to be Rocky,” Bucky says, jerking his thumb back over to the edge of the rink where he’d been sat before. “Hold on a sec.”

Steve waits patiently while Bucky skates back over to the snow blanketing the ground that surrounds the rink. He grows steadily more irritated when he realises he can’t remember where he left his stick. He can’t find the damn thing everywhere and does a lap around the whole perimeter whilst Steve idly pushes the puck around in circles in the middle of the rink. 

After a good ten minutes of searching high and low, Bucky is forced to accept that someone up and ran with his stick while he was too busy making sure Steve didn’t turn into roadkill on the ice. The realisation makes him whip around and glare at Steve.

“Oh, I’m gonna fuckin' _kill_ you, Rogers,” he warns, advancing on Steve who couldn’t look less bothered. 

_He’s really going to be the death of me_ , Bucky thinks.

***  
**10 Years Later**

“Rogers? You gotta be kiddin' me, Coach,” Bucky spits, hands placed flat on the older man’s desk. “Surely there’s someone else.”

Chester Phillips stares at his team’s captain, confusion evident on his face, like he’d just given a kid a lollipop only to have it thrown back in exchange for broccoli. He leans forward in his chair, hearing it creak underneath him what with the weight of his penchant for apple pie, as well as being burdened with Barnes’ flair for the dramatics.

“We’re starting yet another league at the bottom of the table, son. Are you really trying to tell me you don’t want a player like _Steve Rogers_ joining the ranks? Did Dugan concuss you during training again?” It’s a fair question.

Bucky lets out a frustrated noise, whirling away from the man’s desk and running a hand through his hair. “We don’t _need_ him,” he insists. He knows this isn’t an argument he’s going to win, especially since the rest of the team have been on cloud nine since it was announced that the amateur hockey league’s freaking golden boy Steve Rogers was climbing his way down the food chain so he could park his blonde, All-American ass in the middle of the Howling Commandos’ line-up.

“That so?” Coach Phillips asks, unimpressed by Bucky’s diva moment. “Tell me, how many games did we win last season?”

Bucky remains silent because he won’t dignify that with an answer. Coach _knows_ how many games they’ve won, because it was all he talked about in his locker game pep talks. The words _‘fucking goose egg, zero, zilch, you wanna tell me what that is in French, Dernier?’_ echo in his head, loudly enough to make him wince.

His silence is answer enough for Phillips though, who reclines back in his seat. “You don’t know how lucky we are that the Avengers have dropped him from their roster because of his injury.” He speaks with such a reverence that Bucky himself almost believes it’s been some sort of fortuitous happenstance that lead to Rogers getting clubbed by a stick last season, knocking him out cold and out of business until he recovered. It hadn’t been a speedy enough recovery to make him useful to the Avengers again, not when they had – of all people – Carol Danvers to fill in his spot, and Rogers was apparently too damn stubborn to sit a whole season out as a duster, so he’d signed a six-month contract with the Howling Commandos to bide his time until he could rejoin his old team.

Bucky can’t think of anything less patronising. The Commandos, despite being bottom of the league no matter how hard they trained, weren’t some sort of throwaway team looking for strays to pick up, nursing Steve Roger’s baby bird wing until he was strong enough to fly with the rest of his flock again. But apparently he’s the only one to think that way. The rest of the guys were acting like royalty was about to descend upon them.

“You’re going to regret this,” Bucky declares, nodding firmly as if it’s a loaded promise. “This is a mistake.”

Coach Phillips, completely unbothered, just takes a long sip from his mug of coffee. “Well then, can you make sure my mistake is shown into the locker room when he arrives?”

Bucky knows when he’s been beaten, but he isn’t about to leave the coach’s office without making some sort of statement. After a beat of silence, he reaches forward and, without hesitation, tips over Phillips’ pencil pot. They rattle a little bit as they spill out. One falls onto the floor. Bucky steps back and waits for a reaction.

“Did that make you feel better?” Phillips asks calmly.

Pausing to consider this, Bucky eventually nods. “A little.”

“Good,” says Phillips. “Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system – _locker room_.”

This time, Bucky doesn’t argue, just turns on his heel walks out, wondering when he’s going to pay for that little pencil stunt – as if he isn’t already paying for it by walking closer and closer to where the rest of his team are fawning over their new addition. Morita had said earlier that day he was going to get Rogers to sign his puck for him.

Resigned to the fact that, for the next six months, he’s going to be in close proximity with the skinny little runt turned hockey hero that he grew up with in Brooklyn, Bucky trudges onwards, thoughts consumed by Steve Rogers like they always were before. Except this time, there’s no flutter in his ribcage, just a burning sensation spreading across his chest when he wonders how he’s going to cope with feeling this constant and unbridled anger for the next forty-two weeks.

Just like ten years before, there’s one thought sticking out prominently in his mind.

Steve Rogers is going to be the death of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm trying to go for weekly updates here and i'm also a sensitive person who will do anything if people yell at me enough. so, one way or another, this is getting updated at least once a week.


	2. no shortcoming is stronger than pride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the chapter title is a paraphrased version of a beartown quote: _Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride._ because i'm pretty confident that fredrik backman himself would be pretty pleased if he knew his words were being used as chapter titles for a stucky fic.

The atmosphere in the locker room is so charged its stifling and Bucky’s sure that he’s going to be suffocated by the sheer excitement radiating from Morita. 

“Dugan’s bringing him in now,” the right wing announces, checking his phone and jiggling his leg as if that’s going to help dispel the nervous energy running through him.

“Fantastic,” Bucky mutters, dryly.

No one really gives his bad mood the time of day, although he _is_ treated to an eyeroll from Falsworth who really doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to being dramatic. But everyone has pretty much desensitised themselves to Bucky’s grumpy nature by now, although Morita had taken it upon himself to persistently pepper him with questions when he realised his captain wasn’t nearly as enthralled by the impending arrival of Steve Rogers as he was.

Everyone knew that Steve and Bucky had played together as kids, just like everyone knew the reason why Bucky had stopped playing for a while. But no one had been privy to the fact that the accident that made the man lose his left arm had also served as a catalyst for the breakdown of a decade long friendship.

These days, it was unwise for anyone to tell Bucky that his prosthetic would hinder him in his hockey career, but back then when he was first struggling with the loss of a limb, he’d thought that was it. His hockey days were as good as over and he’d turned his back on all the other able-bodied boys who didn’t have to worry about mastering a one-handed grip of their stick. He’d even tried to shut Steve out, which upon reflection, hadn’t been his brightest idea. Steve rarely did as he was told, far less when the demand was coming from Bucky.

He’d ignored his friend’s orders to scram and stayed in Bucky’s room, camping out on sofa cushions on the floor when he could have easily have just shared a bed with the other boy. For once, the distance between them had nothing to do with what Bucky had infamously dubbed his ‘inner gay panic’ before coming out a few years later. In actuality, his refusal to be in such a close proximity to Steve boiled down to the insecurities that had grown in place of an arm. He didn’t want Steve to be pressed up against him when he was… ,i>well. He no longer thought of himself as broken, but back then it had been a different story.

In hindsight, it had been stupid to even entertain the idea that Steve would have been bothered by something like that, but Bucky hadn’t been thinking straight back then. He’d been bitter and sullen, too withdrawn to even look at his hockey puck collection which he eventually boxed up and threw out into the garage. Becca had found them and stuffed them under her bed, confident that her brother would come around one day and want to see them again. That blind optimism had been something that she and Steve had shared, as his best friend had reviewed the situation solely with an annoying sort of idealism.

It had helped at first, but then Bucky had grown irritated. Steve’s insistence that he could just get back on the ice had frustrated him. It wasn’t that easy. Apparently he wasn’t as skilled at picking himself back up as Steve was. He’d told him that.

 _“Just because you can pick your scrawny ass back up when someone knocks you down doesn’t mean I can.”_ Despite his feelings for Steve manifesting into something ugly and jealous over the following years, he’d never really forgiven himself for not immediately taking back those words. The hurt that had flashed across Steve’s face had triggered something inside Bucky, a fight or flight instinct that had quickly swerved towards total panic. Instead of staying level-headed about it, he’d snapped at Steve and told him not to bother coming back, to just go and find someone else to look out for him when he was busy trying to single-handedly get himself killed by guys twice the size of him.

A lot of his memories surrounding the accident were blurry, but that one was always as sharp as ever.

Which brings him around to sitting on the bench in the locker room, awaiting the arrival of the same skinny kid he’d looked out for back in Brooklyn, the same one he’d shut out because he’d been too heavily reliant on Steve’s unwavering loyalty to always come back. But he hadn’t come back, and even though Bucky knows deep down that was his fault, he’d found it easier to blame Steve.

He knows that Steve isn’t as tiny and fragile as he’d once been. After they’d stopped being friends, Steve had apparently worked harder than ever to get himself a place on the local team. He didn’t have his usual bodyguard snapping at anyone who threatened to knock him down anymore, so he had to really stand up for himself this time. Bucky had seen photographic evidence of an older, much more athletic-looking Steve Rogers, but he hadn’t really _believed_ that the same sickly-looking punk he’d chased around a rink had changed all that much.

Up until Steve walks into the room.

Dum Dum leads him through the doorway which seems to miraculously shrink as Steve shoulders his way through it with a small smile.

Morita’s hockey stick clatters to the floor when he drops it in fright, Falsworth looks like Christmas has come early, Dernier is red in the face and looks about three seconds from _jumping_ him and Gabe, it seems, has embarked on his own personal mission to record the whole thing from his iPhone.

“Gents, this is Steve Rogers,” Dum Dum announces unnecessarily.

“You don’t say, Dugan!” Morita replies, leaping from his seat and materialising in front of Steve to pump his hand in an overly eager handshake. If he moved that fast on the ice they might not be stuck at the bottom of the leader board, Bucky thinks bitterly.

Dum Dum is busy helping Steve make introductions. “That’s Falsworth. Dernier. Gabe Jones. Junior. You’ll meet Carter in a bit. The one with no decorum attached to your hand is Morita.” Morita is still holding on tightly to Steve’s hand with both of his own and barely flinches at Dugan’s sharp, “ _Down_ , Jim.”

Bucky remains pointedly stoic, hoping Dum Dum will have somehow forgotten him. Naturally though, as if hearing the silently pleading request and choosing at once to ignore it, he turns to him, one hand on Steve’s shoulder and one gesturing to Bucky.

“And of course you’ll know Barnes.”

So, here’s the thing.

As much as Bucky usually likes to pride himself on keeping his cool, being a good judge of character and being an all-round decent human being who can lean into the logical side of things, that’s absolutely not true. It took him more time than he’d like to admit to accept the fact that Steve didn’t come back because Steve no longer needed him and, naturally, that had been a blow to his ego which had already been packing a punch ever since his accident. He’d dedicated so many years of his life determined to hate Steve Rogers, because it was easier than the alternative which he isn’t even going to think about right now.

But as much as Bucky can dig his heels into the ground and remain firm in his stance that he and Rogers aren’t going to get along, Bucky is, first and foremost, a human male. And he can only blame basic biology for the way his mouth all but dries up when Steve finally turns to face him, training his sharp, blue-eyed gaze on him.

Although he’s sitting down and therefore it’s hard to tell, Bucky is pretty positive that Steve is taller than him now. He’s also bulked up more than Bucky would think is humanly possible and the tight shirt he’s wearing that stretches tight across his torso doesn’t necessarily leave a lot to the imagination, and that just isn’t _fair_.

Bucky, who’s been a long-suffering member of the human race for quite some time now, is rendered speechless, despite having so much to say about the newest transfer back in Phillips’ office, because despite the fact that Steve’s shot up a few feet, filled out nicely and no longer looks like a pat on the back would snap him in half, he’s still undoubtedly the _exact same_.

When he smiles at Bucky, his face lights up in that same way it always did, painfully reminiscent of a Labrador wagging its tail. The grin is toothy and wide and unapologetically open, like he could very well be aware of the fact that Bucky sort of wants to throw something at his perfect face, and yet he couldn’t care less. He’s so… _Steve_. Suddenly, it doesn’t take much effort for Bucky to reconcile this… _specimen_ in front of him to his smart-mouthed childhood friend who used to have to stuff newspapers into his shoes.

“It’s been a long time, Buck,” Steve says, familiarity oozing from his tone and dripping all over the locker room floor. Bucky is painfully aware that the rest of the team are goggling at them, struck dumb by how amicable Steve is being, especially since Bucky’s recent behaviour over the past few days had hinted at this particular meeting not going down in quite as much of a civil manner. 

“Yeah,” Bucky manages to choke out once he finds his voice. “Long time, Rogers.”

There’s a flicker of _something_ on Steve’s face, like he’s picked up on how the words seem to have to force themselves out of Bucky’s mouth – but what did the guy expect? Bucky to jump up and hug him like no time had passed at all?

It would be a very Steve thing to expect.

Stepping forward, Steve still grins at him and, on anyone else, it would look manic. “It’s good to see you,” he tells Bucky, his tone nothing but sincere as he holds out a hand for Bucky to shake.

Despite everything, Bucky isn’t going to be the asshole that refuses to shake the guy’s hand so he pushes himself to his feet, his left hand reaching out to clasp Steve’s, faltering a little when he sees the near-imperceptible way Steve’s eyes flick down to glance at Bucky’s prosthetic before immediately drawing themselves back up. As if Bucky wouldn’t notice.

Whatever painful wave of nostalgia had washed over Bucky before vanishes immediately, evaporating into a new cloud of anger. Steve doesn’t _say_ anything about Bucky’s arm, he doesn’t need to. But Bucky isn’t going to let it go amiss that he _saw_ that look.

He makes a show of flexing his fingers, pointedly drawing attention to the action. “Different, huh?” he says. He levels Steve with a challenging stare before reaching forward and tightly gripping his hand. There might have been a little added pressure, but he doubts that this Steve 2.0 can feel it.

“Grew it myself,” he bites out.

Steve looks vaguely horrified at the implication in Bucky’s tone and immediately shakes his head. “No, Buck, I didn’t mean-”

“There you are.” Phillips’ booming voice slices through the locker room as he strides forward, oblivious to the way the rest of the team are standing frozen, too scared to make a move lest they get in the way of whatever showdown Bucky’s locked Steve into.

“Good to have you join the ranks, son,” Coach beams, grasping Steve’s hand jovially because it’s apparently Handshake Central today. Bucky stands to the side, catching the look Phillips gives him but not rising to it, too busy stewing in annoyance when Steve turns on the charm.

“It’s good to be here, sir! I’ve been watching the Commandos for a while now. You guys are a real tightknit unit,” Steve says.

Bucky can’t help the scoff that tears from his throat. He’s even less bothered by the way everyone looks at him, Steve in particular looking like some sort of wounded puppy dog.

“Is there… a problem here, Bucky?” Steve asks and Bucky can sense everyone around them shrinking away, like this isn’t a conversation they want any part of.

He pauses for a moment, the silence deliberate before he plasters a smile onto his face. It’s forced and not at all natural and he’s pretty sure Steve will see right through it although that’s sort of the point. “No problem at all.”

“Alright, now that we’ve said our hello’s, I want you all to get your asses out onto the ice,” Phillips orders, his eyes darting warily between Steve and Bucky. Bucky had _tried_ to warn him that he wouldn’t exactly be co-operative, but something told him his coach had thought he was bluffing. As entertaining as it would be to watch the dawning realisation sink in, Bucky wanted to get out on the ice and hit something with his stick.

Shouldering past Steve, he makes his way out of the locker room, hearing his team mutter words under their breath as he goes, jamming guards into their mouths and helmets on top of their heads. Just as he’s sitting down to lace up his skates, he hears Dum Dum clear his throat.

“Oh, here’s Carter. Carter, I want you to meet our new centre, Steve Rogers.”

Bucky risks a glance over his shoulder, watching as a figure clad head to toe in gear is immediately greeted to another blinding Steve Rogers smile. Pathetic.

“Nice to meet you, pal!” Steve says and, you bet’cha, offers his hand out to shake. Even Bucky can’t help but crack a smile, because he knows this is going to be good.

“Pleasure to meet you.” The voice, coated in a warm British accent, floats out from behind the grill of the helmet. Its owner reaches up to pull it off her head, Peggy’s careful, neutral expression appearing from behind it, slowly melting into a smile as she jams the helmet under one arm and uses the other to receive Steve’s offered hand.

Rogers looks like he’s been smacked, dazedly shaking Carter’s hand while she tells him that he can call her Peggy. Bucky’s seen that same look on the face of every other guy who meets Peggy for the first time, and he sees why. He may be gay, but he isn’t blind and Peggy’s pretty high up on the list of most stunning women there is. It’s no surprise that Rogers is the equivalent of the heart-eyes emoji right now, and Bucky finds himself turning away with an eye roll.

He hears Steve and Peggy’s quiet chit chat slowly come to an end as she excuses herself and makes her way onto the rink. As he watches her go, Bucky hears the deep, rumbling laugh of Dum Dum behind him. There’s a sound like he’s clapped someone on the shoulder and he doesn’t have to turn around to know that it’s Steve.

“I’d forget about it if I were you, my friend,” Dum Dum says.

This time, Bucky can’t help but angle himself ever so slightly on the bench to catch Steve’s reaction. He’s still watching Peggy skate but eventually tears his gaze away from her and back to the team’s co-captain. “Huh?” he asks. It’s the most ineloquent he’s sounded so far. Again, Bucky has to suppress an eye roll.

“Peggy’s a beaut, I get it,” Dum Dum laughs. “But she’ll have you eating ice if you spend your time here ogling her.”

“Oh, I wasn’t-” Steve protests, holding up both hands in surrender.

“I know, I know,” Dum Dum says reassuringly. “But also, that ship sailed long ago. And as handsome as you are, Golden Boy, you’re not exactly her type.”

“What do you mean?”

“He _means_ ,” Bucky finally pipes up, standing up and feeling a grim satisfaction as he turns and smirks at Steve. “Carter’s taken.”

He points towards the opposite end of the rink where Peggy is leaning over the low wall and kissing her girlfriend.

“That’s Angie Martinelli,” Gabe supplies helpfully. “Our cheerleader. She also works in the arena’s cafeteria.”

“You guys have cheerleaders?” Steve doesn’t look _excited_ by the prospect, just surprised.

“Not exactly.” Morita sidles up next to him and inclines his head towards Peggy and Angie. “But Angie was hanging around so much that we said she could be our mascot and she did not take kindly to that.”

“So she is our cheerleader,” finishes Dernier, plonking himself down on the bench to lace up his own skates.

There’s a beat of silence while Steve digests this and Bucky latches onto the opportunity to turn to him with a raised eyebrow. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” he asks. Steve isn’t leering at Peggy and Angie’s affectionate display, but he’s isn’t – _shocker_ – immediately hauling out a rainbow flag to wave in their direction either.

To his credit, Steve looks vaguely insulted by the implication that he would be. But it doesn’t stop Bucky’s hackles rising any less. He’s pretty protective of Peggy and Angie. Peggy was the first person on the team he came out to after she talked so casually about her relationship with Angie and he doesn’t want to assume that hockey’s favourite golden boy is so perfect that he never lapses into moments of casual homophobia. Bucky had gotten lucky with a team like the Howling Commandos who couldn’t care less who he wanted to date, despite playing a sport where prejudice is _rife_ , and the idea of Steve potentially infringing on that safety bubble sets him on edge. Sure, he’d always been a pretty liberal kid but maybe that was just something else that had changed about him over the years.

In any case, Steve just looks at him like he’s mad. “Of course, it’s not a problem. I mean, heck, I-”

Whatever Steve is about to say next is cut off by Phillips loudly clapping his hands together to get their attention. “Stop dawdling, fellas. Martinelli, put my defenseman down.”

Angie meets his scolding with a wide grin that even Phillips isn’t immune to. With a final peck to Peggy’s lips, she skips back up the stairs towards the cafeteria and the rest of the team make their way onto the ice.

The practise goes about as well as Bucky expects it to.

Steve skates rings around Morita and Gabe. What makes it worse is that they don’t even seem to care and _he_ takes it upon himself to apologise every time he makes a breakaway and steals the puck from them.

“Wow, Steve! That was a good shot!” Morita calls from the floor where he’s tripped over his own skates at the exact same time Steve yells a, “Cripes, I’m so sorry!” from the other side of the rink.

Bucky’s eyes nearly roll into the back of his head.

“Alright, one-on-one,” Phillips called from the bench. “Barnes, Rogers. You’re up.”

So this is how Coach is going to exact his revenge for the pencil pot stunt, Bucky realises as he drops a puck by his feet and watches Steve carefully at the other end of the ice. They stand opposite each other, hands gripping their sticks, eyes forward like they’re in some sort of Wild West showdown.

As soon as Coach blows his whistle, Bucky’s off, tailing the puck down the rink, hyperaware of Steve skating towards him, a loose gap between them as Bucky advances towards the blue line down Steve’s end. 

It occurs to him that he needs to remember he’s playing with Rogers here, the Avengers’ star player who isn’t going to fall victim to the same swipe checks that Morita or Dernier would try, their sticks clattering off to the side when they can’t keep control of them. But Bucky’s also battling with his own determination to just prove to Steve that he’s just as good a player and so he pushes on, dodging a poke check from Rogers and then another, his ego swelling as he drives Steve back towards the goal. Sure, he might be the Avengers’ top scorer, but Rogers isn’t much of a defenseman.

Still, no matter how many successful poke checks Steve fails to execute, persistently relinquishing control of the puck back to Bucky, he’s still large and quick and there’s no way that Bucky is going to get by him without ramming his full weight into the asshole, and even he isn’t enough of an idiot to do that.

So he pivots. Quickly turning and taking the puck with him, he takes a quick detour back the way he came, Steve hot on his heels.

Once again, Bucky spins, switching the puck to his other side, far away from Steve who – _goddammit_ – still manages to close that gap between them. And it’s Bucky’s frustration that gets the better of him as Steve somehow manages to swipe check him and makes off with the puck.

He’s fast but Bucky’s just as quick and chases him up the ice, gaining momentum as he swerves in front of Steve, the gap between them so tight there’s no way Rogers can move around him without Bucky continuing to shadow him all the way up to the goals.

He’s shoulder to shoulder with Steve, can hear the other man’s breath go up and down in a steady rhythm that’s totally unfamiliar to him. Where are the tremors, the nervous rattling, the wheezing that always leaves him desperate for his inhaler? It catches him off guard for a second, but he pulls himself back to the present and focuses on pivoting around so he can force Steve back down the other end of the rink.

As he pushes Steve back, Rogers gives as good as he gets, still not giving up his possession of the puck. The gap between them is practically airtight and Bucky is ready to give the other guy a wide berth so he can swoop back in and go for another swipe when he _hears it_.

Rogers has the _gall_ , the _audacity_ , the _sheer fucking nerve_ – to laugh.

It slips out of his grill and Bucky’s head snaps up, squinting at Steve through his helmet. Steve’s already looking back at him, eyes bright and blue and creasing at the sides.

“Kinda reminds you of the good old days, huh, Buck?” he says.

It’s the bluntness of it that catches Bucky off guard. He freezes, just for a split second, and that’s all the time it takes for Steve to skate around him, sending the puck flying through the air and into the goal.

The rest of the Commandos are cheering by the time Bucky realises what’s happened and he turns around to see Steve pulling his helmet off his head and of _course_ the bastard doesn’t even have the slightest hint of helmet hair. He’s also wearing a smile that could have just been triumphant but all Bucky sees is a smug smirk and rage rolls off him in waves.

“Nice play,” Steve says as Bucky nears him, taking off his own helmet and, naturally, looking like he was dragged through a hedge backwards what with his hair sticking up every which way.

He doesn’t have time for niceties and snaps at Steve. “What the fuck was that?”

“What was… what?” The asshole’s really trying to play at being innocent.

“Your little… taunt about the good old days or whatever.”

At this, Steve’s brows furrow together and Bucky’s just happy to have elicited some sort of reaction that wasn’t that same dopey smile. _Good_ , he thinks. _Be angry_. 

“What are you talking about? I was just talking about when we were kids!”

“Yeah, to fucking distract me so you could steal the puck.”

“Are you serious?” Steve gapes at him. “Barnes, what is your problem?”

“What’s my _problem?_ ” Bucky’s shocked he even has to ask.

“I get that we haven’t seen each other in a while, but I still thought we could be-”

“What?” A nasty scoff sounds from Bucky. “Friends?”

He holds Steve’s gaze, watching as the other man’s shoulders visibly drop. It’s clear that Steve had thought exactly that but he doesn’t want to say that aloud, too stubborn to play into Bucky’s hands.

“Okay, break it up, ladies,” Peggy says, somehow managing to skate in between them, one hand pressed firmly against Bucky’s chest as she pushes him backwards. As riled as he is, Bucky can see her pursed lips and even he isn’t as pig-headed enough to argue with a pissed off Peggy Carter. 

He draws his eyes back up to Steve who’s staring at him with an unreadable expression.

“What happened to us, Buck?” he asks softly, and _goddammit_. Those words, that fucking tone, despite everything that’s gone down today, the question still manages to rip its way through Bucky’s chest and he rears his head back slightly. It’s been ten years since they last spoke and Bucky had spent all of them thinking he was the only one asking himself that same question.

He’s staring at Steve, he knows he is, and he wants to look away but also he absolutely doesn’t. Eventually, the decision is made for him as Phillips roars at them from across the ice.

“Is this episode of _Maury_ wrapping up anytime soon? Can we get back to practise? I don’t know if you two lunkheads have noticed, but we have a game this week!”

Finally, Bucky turns away. “Sure thing, Coach,” he mutters. He can still feel Steve's eyes burning a hole into his back as he skates away.

It’s going to be a long fucking season.


	3. life doesn't let you choose your battles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: continuously writes steve cussing and swearing in this bc i will never forgive joss whedon for that one 'language!' line

The past week hadn’t been easy for the Howling Commandos and with game day rapidly approaching, Bucky is pretty sure he’s another step closer to a full-on nervous breakdown. The atmosphere between him and Steve is so fraught with tension, it’s having a knock-on effect on the rest of the team.

The other day, they spent so long arguing over a play that Dugan had to physically insert themselves between them and break them up. Morita had been close to tears and even the usually unflappable Falsworth had left practise red-faced and flustered. Morale was pretty much at an all-time low.

Naturally, everyone thinks that Steve is blameless, even Peggy who always seems to find a sick sense of pleasure in telling a man, _any_ man, when he’s wrong. No matter how many times Steve thinks he’s too good enough to go for one of Bucky’s plays, she’s there to congratulate him and tell him he’s a ‘marvellous’ player. There’s no way that Bucky can pretend he’s not even a little bit butthurt about that.

When they finish yet another practise, Bucky welcoming Steve back to the locker room with a frosty reception, he starts thinking that maybe he needs some backup.

“I mean, come on, he’s totally trying to move in on Peggy,” Bucky says, gesturing broadly to Steve and Peggy who are deep in conversation. But Bucky can tell that Rogers is trying his best to flirt. He’s got that soft look in his eyes, and his head is tilted to the side like he’s hanging onto every word that Peggy is saying and yeah, _maybe_ that’s just the kind of guy Steve is but Bucky isn’t a damn fool and he knows what’s going on and Steve’s eyes are practically _twinkling_ right now and he’s _absolutely_ thankful for Angie’s tinkling laugh and the way it gives him a reason to stop staring at Rogers’ stupid, lovestruck, puppy-dog face.

“Are you serious, Barnes? Have you seen my legs? Don’t tell me you think he can get a _look in_ when I’m right here,” Angie smirks, digging her fork into the piece of cake they’re sharing (or rather, the piece of cake Bucky bought from the cafeteria and soon realised that he was going to have to divide it between himself and the bubbly waitress that had sat herself down next to him and immediately started eating it).

“But,” she continues, tipping her head to the side in consideration. “I get why you think he’s dangerous. I mean, even I’d eat him with a spoon.”

Bucky nearly chokes on the cake. “What?” he splutters, crumbs spraying everywhere. It’s not dignified. “I don’t think he’s _dangerous_. He’s not even that handsome. Besides, you don’t even like guys!”

Angie props her chin on her hand and gives him a pointed eyebrow raise that he definitely doesn’t want to deal with. “Honey, I’m gay. But I ain’t blind,” she says. “And he’s so handsome.”

“What? Not even. I mean, hardly anyone gave him a second look when we were younger.”

“Yeah, I heard he was a scrawny little thing.” Angie reaches over to wipe away cake crumbs from the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “Stop smiling, I’m tryna clean you up.”

“I ain’t smiling. In fact, I’m remembering how _painful_ it was to watch him in high school, tryna ask girls to the dance.” That might have been a cruel thing to say, but Bucky’s absorbed in his own desperate need to make Angie realise that he does not think that Steve Rogers is handsome in any capacity.

The waitress pouts a little. “Aww, he went to the dance by himself?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No. I mean…” He bites his lip. “I ditched my date and I went with him.”

He’s surprised that Angie doesn’t just melt right into the table what with the way her whole body sags as she lets out a long, drawn out ‘awww’. It’s loud enough to attract the attention of Steve and Peggy who glance over at them. Bucky catches the look Rogers gives them, caught somewhere in between amused and puzzled and _jeeze_ , can that guy get any more patronising?

“Shut up, it wasn’t like that,” he grumbles, turning back to Angie who knows has both hands tucked underneath her chin, her eyes gleaming like some sort of Disney princess. He wouldn’t be surprised if she starts singing any moment now.

“Did you _want_ it to be like that?” Angie asks, her tone turning sly. 

Bucky is usually so wrapped up in how damn adorable Angie can be, all doe eyes and wide smiles and cute pet names, that he’s constantly forgetting how downright _devious_ she can be. Her ability to totally blindside him always leaves him reeling. It wouldn’t surprise him if it soon came to fruition that both she and Peggy were running their own secret agent division.

“What? No, of course not,” he argues. “I didn’t even – I mean, I _never_ … He and I were _just_ friends and we never even…”

He quickly realises that the more he tries to dig his way out of this, the easier it’ll be for Angie to cotton onto the fact that he’s lying. Eventually, he chances a sideways glance at Steve and Peggy who’ve turned back to their own conversation (what can they _possibly_ have to talk about for this long?) and angles his body away from them so he’s looking directly at Angie.

“Nothing ever happened between me and Steve. Idiot was too damn oblivious, and I never said anything,” he confesses.

He must look pretty miserable about the admission because his ears aren’t immediately filled with the high-pitched squeal he was expecting from Angie. He doesn’t look at her until she presses her fingers underneath his chin and gently (but forcibly) lifts his head so she can catch his eye.

“And now?” she asks.

Bucky squints. “Now?”

“Do you _still_ like him?”

“God, no.” He shakes his head. “Asshole’s too smug for his own good now. And _look_ at him. He just looks like every other pretty boy I’ve ever came across.”

There’s a beat of silence. And Bucky _knows_ what Angie is going to say before she even opens her mouth.

“So you think he’s pretty?”

He shoves the rest of the cake in her mouth before she can say anything else.

***

Bucky’s refilling his water bottle when Steve makes his way along the corridor, all broad-shoulders and narrow waist and stupidly neat hair. Bucky kind of wants to throw his own damn water all over himself. Or over Steve.

“Rogers.” His curt tone is an attempt at being civil and the look on Steve’s face tells him that he doesn’t buy it for one second.

But Steve is always infuriatingly polite even when Bucky would wager that he kind of wants to knock Bucky’s head clean off his shoulders after yet another disastrous training session.

“Nice practise,” Steve says, as Bucky caps his water bottle, leaning in to fill his own.

Bucky stares at him, wary and untrusting. “That’s a joke, right?”

“No,” Steve replies, conversationally. “I always love it when you yell at me and pinpoint everything you think I’m doing wrong just because it’s not what you think should be done.”

The silence is perforated by the sound of the old water fountain gurgling and making a half-assed attempt to steadily empty itself into Steve’s bottle. Bucky’s eye twitches.

“You know what? Fuck you, Rogers.”

Steve straightens up, bottle still half-empty. Although he and his giddy optimism would probably insist that it was actually half- _full_. But there’s no traces of that bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, overeager go-getter in Steve’s stony expression right now.

“Alright, Buck. Spit it out. We got a game tomorrow and you need to get your shit together if we’re going to have any hope in hell of winning it. You clearly have a problem with me, so what is it?” Steve spreads his arms to the side as if welcoming a slew of insults from Bucky that the other man would usually be happier to deliver, but he feels uncharacteristically cowed at that moment and drops his gaze.

“I don’t have a problem with you,” he mumbles, because Bucky Barnes is, in fact, a fucking child.

“ _Bullshit_ , Bucky. You haven’t been happy with me being here from day one. I joined this team, excited to see you again but instead, it’s just been you hazing me since the start.”

It’s the admission that Steve had wanted to see him that makes Bucky look up. But instead of burrowing his way into that conversation in the nervous but steadfast way he _wants_ to, he takes a different approach, swerving around what he really wants to say and pressing on a pressure point that he _knows_ will antagonise Steve because he thinks that’s his only option right now.

“You mean you really thought you could just come in here and we’d go back to being friends? That I could just forget about everything that’s happened and go back to being your buddy, your pal, your…” He trails off, wild-eyed.

“After _what’s_ happened?” Steve steps forward and Bucky fights against the urge to take an automatic step back. “We were _best friends_ and I still don’t know what happened to make all that go away. Was it your… your…”

Bucky sets his jaw and the glint in his eyes must clue Steve into the fact that there’s no way in hell he’s going to be allowed to just beat around the bush with this one. 

“Your accident,” Steve continues, his voice firm. “I told you I wasn’t going away after that. I wasn’t the one who stopped trying. I still came to your house even when you didn’t wanna see me. I stood on your stoop while you made Becca tell me to go back home. Buck, I was outside your place every day for weeks after you told me to leave. I couldn’t care less how fit or unfit you were. You stood by me when I was skinny and asthmatic and couldn’t bench press a fly. Do you _really_ think I wouldn’t stay with you when you were hurt?”

Bucky is stricken. He grips his water bottle tighter and there’s a huge, pressing part of him that sort of wants to bawl his fucking eyes out, but after years of being told ‘no’ and that he still isn’t good enough and that doors were always going to be closed in his face, he’s still buried under the pressure of refusing to concede. So he shakes his head.

“Come off it, Rogers. You might have been shrimpy but you still got to play. Yeah, maybe you spent seasons as a duster, but look at what happened when we grew up. You got the glory.”

Steve’s eyes are blazing. “But I lost you.”

It’s enough to make Bucky want to relent, to close the gap between them, to crush Steve against him and forget they even spent all that time apart. 

Almost.

Because there’s still that taunting, masochistic part of him that goads Bucky. _Push him further_ , it says, because that voice is always there to remind Bucky that he doesn’t deserve anything good.

“So what? I lost _everything_.” He can’t help himself as he adds, “Plus, you got new friends.”

He thinks of all the pictures he’s seen on Instagram of the Avengers. The Howling Commandos are close-knit but there’s always been something glamorous and coveted about the Avengers. They’re the family that Steve always wanted and Bucky can’t ever imagine being able to slide himself into the photos of Steve with his arm slung around Sam Wilson’s shoulders. He can never see himself smiling into Natasha Romanoff’s vlogging camera while she and Clint Barton see how many cups of water they can rest on top of a sleeping Steve.

And it’s all because he’s never going to be good enough.

“I didn’t just walk away from you and find a new best friend,” Steve snaps and Bucky figures that they’re both aware of how childish that sounds, but they’re choosing not to comment on it. “Maybe I didn’t lose as much as you, James, but-”

Bucky can’t say for sure whether it’s the words Steve is saying or if it can be boiled down to the way Steve says _James_ but he’s moving forward, his arm lying flat against Steve’s chest as he shoves the other man backwards. Steve, too alarmed to react, is backed up into the wall and, for a split second, Bucky isn’t sure whether he’s going to kiss Steve or kill him.

In the end he does neither, just glares up at him, drinking in the way Steve’s eyes are wide and fixated on him, a flurry of emotions flickering behind them.

“Don’t think for one _second_ ,” Bucky warns. “That you’ve had it harder than me.”

He stands there, arm still holding Steve against the wall. Or rather, his arm is still pressed into Steve’s chest but Bucky knows the other guy could have him on his back in three seconds flat if he wanted to. Instead, Steve just stands there, breathing evenly.

“Bucky,” he whispers, and his voice is _filled_ with fierce, trembling meaning that Bucky allows himself a moment to let his eyes dart down to Steve’s lips. His gaze holds for a second before he lets out a frustrated noise and pushes himself backwards, using Steve’s chest as leverage.

“Just bring your fuckin’ A-game tomorrow, Rogers,” he says, breathless as he turns and walks away, adrenaline chasing him all the way.

***

Bucky dumps his bag on the bench in the locker room and starts pulling his gear on. 

“Rough night, Barnes?” Gabe asks, setting his kit down beside him and giving him a wary look.

Bucky figures he must look like hell. He got about two hours of sleep, if that, his body tired but his mind wind awake, contradictory thoughts running rampant. All he could think about was his conversation with Steve in the hallway, what Steve had said, the way Bucky had been pressed up against him, Steve pliant and unmoving underneath him and his body had been hot with anger, frustration bubbling way under his skin before that prickly heat shifted and turned into something that had Bucky’s hand inching towards the waistband of his boxers before he’d turned on his side and brought his pillow down over his head in a half-hearted attempt to suffocate himself.

So yeah, rough night.

He’s busy scraping his hair back into a bun when Steve walks in and something twists in Bucky’s chest. They both catch each other’s eye and quickly look away and Gabe has enough sense not to comment on that.

By the time Phillips comes in to deliver his usual pep talk, the tension in the locker room is palpable and he scrutinises each and every one of his players before sighing.

“You all know the X-Men are a tough bunch to beat,” he tells them. “But if you sorry asses pull yourselves together and remember that you’re a team, you could be too. So go out there and prove to me that I did the right thing not retiring three years ago.”

It’s enough to make a chuckle ripple through the room and they stand, Dum Dum slapping then fondly on their helmets as they make their way out onto the ice.

The first game of the season always manages to take Bucky’s breath away. The stands are full of long-time supporters who’ll continue to instil their faith in Howling Commandos no matter how many trophies they fail to bring home. Angie is there, front and centre, Peggy’s number painted on her cheeks, and so is Becca, grinning wildly and waving at Bucky. He waves back and tries not to feel too annoyed when her waving turns more vigorous as she spots Steve. Bucky watches over his shoulder as Steve sees her and beams, waving right back before he realises Bucky is watching and drops his hand.

Their opponents are busy lapping up the attention from the away crowd but their coach approaches Phillips for a handshake.

“Nice to see you, Charles,” Phillips says, a little gruffly.

“Same to you, Chester. Let’s hope it’s a good game,” Charles says, amicably enough. But then again, he’s about as British as Carter, and Bucky isn’t sure he’s capable of trash talk.

As Coach Xavier turns in his wheelchair and goes back to his own team, Phillips gives them all a grave nod before the starting line-up make their way onto the ice, grim determination following each and every one of them. Peppered among that is the usual modicum of optimism that can’t help but show its face even when the odds are stacked against the Commandos.

Bucky feels it as he grips his stick, as he watches Morita and Dernier take up their positions, as he sees Dum Dum brace himself in front of the goal, as he sends a nod to Carter across the rink, as he tries not to look at Steve but finds himself doing so anyway because he needs to be aware of every member of his team if they want to make this a memorable game for all the right reasons.

As soon as the game begins, Bucky realises that the X-Men have only gotten better over summer. Their players zip around the ice in a way that makes his head spin and he does his best to tail their centre but the girl is a _menace_. She’s so fast it’s like she skates _through_ him, appearing on the other side and sending the puck flying towards the net. Luckily, Dum Dum is a _tank_ and manages to block it and send the puck flying back towards Morita who takes it down the far right only to be checked by some other guy.

“Nice going, Iceman,” the centre cheers, bumping her fist off his. Bucky huffs in frustration and waits for the next play, so focused on making sure the girl stays as far away from the goal as possible that he almost misses Steve taking possession of the puck. 

There’s a wide berth between Rogers and the other team’s defensemen and Bucky watches in awe as Steve sweeps around the back of the goal, ducks out of the way of ‘Iceman’ and sends the puck right in between the goalie’s legs.

The buzzer clatters off the walls of the rinks and it’s a familiar sound to Bucky, but rarely ever on their end. He’s standing gormlessly on the ice before he realises what’s just happened and watches as the rest of the team swamp Steve. He disappears under a mountain of dark green jerseys as they pound his back and congratulate him and call him a ‘beautiful son of a bitch’ and Bucky gravitates nearer the huddle as Phillips joyfully loses his shit over by the bench.

As the tiny crowd of Commandos disperses, Steve picks himself up, bright red and grinning and even Bucky finds himself smiling, toothy and unapologetic and it doesn’t even fade when Steve catches him looking.

“Sorry, was that a bad play?” Steve asks, a lilt in his voice and, Jesus Christ, that little _shit_. Bucky kinda wants to throw something at his helmet but he also wants to pull the bastard in and kiss him senseless because, for the first time, he realises that just maybe they have a shot of winning this thing. So he just stands there, watching Steve’s smile flicker and slowly begin to disappear.

“Just keep it up, Rogers,” he says eventually before he loses that smile for good.

Steve’s answering grin is blinding.

Things take a turn in the second period though and soon the X-Men are one-upping them with a 2-1 lead. Bucky can feel his own morale dipping and even Peggy is sounding less enthused by his plays. 

The X-Men’s centre – a girl called Kitty Pryde, Bucky learns – is ruthless, even against Dum Dum. She weaves expertly in and out of them, aided by a defenseman who’s hungry to check everyone in his path. But Bucky’s starting to see weaknesses in their line-up that they can use to their advantage.

For example, their right wing, a brunette girl with a strip of white in her hair, is fast but not impossibly so. Plus, she seems terrified of being touched or checked and gave up the puck easily enough when Peggy came skating her way. It’s a mistake she hasn’t made again but not one that Bucky forgot so easily.

With the third period nearly over, the Commandos are beginning to lose hope and Phillips isn’t any better. He tells them that if it weren’t for Rogers and Dugan then they’d be losing by more than one and Bucky can’t ignore the bitter taste that settles in his mouth at that, made worse by the fact that Steve has the audacity to look sheepish, the tips of his ears turning red.

He would have preferred it if Rogers had just taken it on the chin like Dum Dum does, turning to the rest of the team and saying, “Yeah, you lazy bastards. I’m blocking everything on my own out there. Where the hell are you?”

“Relax, Dum Dum,” Bucky says, rising to his feet. “I got a play.”

He tells them about the weak right wing, watching with satisfaction as his team nods. All of them except Steve because _of fucking course_. 

“Problem, Rogers?”

Steve looks hesitant, probably embarrassed to have been called out but eventually he shifts in his seat, leaning forward and clasping his hands. “I just don’t think an offensive attack like that should be our sole focus.”

Mentally, Bucky starts to count to ten.

“What do you have in mind, Steve?” asks Peggy.

Make that twenty.

“I totally agree with you, Bucky. We can use that to our advantage. But if we’re going to be chasing her down, I still need someone to have my back. Their defenseman doesn’t tire easy. He’s been tailing me since the beginning and hasn’t broke a sweat. I’m getting nowhere near the goal if we don’t cover him.”

“You’re not the only one that can score, you know,” Bucky says.

“I _know that_. But while you’re busy playing scare tactics, I’m the only one with a shot of making this even.”

It’s so _arrogant_ that all positive feelings left clinging to him from Steve’s initial goal are washed away by a wave of newfound impatience.

“Hate to break it to you, superstar, but I’m the captain. I call the shots and I say we bring down their right wing and let Gabe take us home.”

Gabe looks like he’d rather not be pulled into this argument, eyes darting nervously between the two of them. Steve continues to stare challengingly at Bucky before he shrugs.

“Fine. Whatever you say. _Captain_.”

There’s more that Bucky wants to say, all of it colourful and laden with curses, but Peggy is busy shepherding him back onto the ice.

As the third period begins, there’s a lot of skating nowhere and ending up empty handed and Bucky sends up a grateful prayer to God for blessing them with Dum Dum Dugan and his unfailing willingness to constantly dominant the goals, blocking all the shots fired his way and being the only thing that’s still keeping them afloat. It’s the only way they’re not completely screwed by the time the clock announces there’s ten minutes left in the game.

It’s with a heavy heart that Bucky soon has to admit to himself that maybe this isn’t going to be the beginning of a winning streak for them. They’d be lucky enough to even draw but that still seems like a far-fetched outcome. 

However, he sees their moment of opportunity when the puck is passed to the X-Men’s right wing. She takes off down the ice but Bucky follows her. So does Peggy. So does Dernier. Because Bucky told them that’s exactly what they should do. They’re closing in on her and she senses that and intimidation isn’t something that Bucky ever resorts to in real life to get his own way but it’s a desperate measure on the ice and soon enough she loses the puck – anything to avoid being checked, he thinks – and it goes flying across the rink.

“Jones!” Bucky calls and a figure speeds by him, catching the puck with his stuck, but it isn’t Gabe. Naturally it’s Steve, and Bucky’s pride can’t afford to be mad that this is going to be another moment of glory for Steve fucking Rogers because he knows that maybe this might secure a draw for them if Steve can just get his ass down the ice and send that motherfucking puck into the net.

Bucky watches him go and his hopes continue to climb higher and higher until he hears Peggy gasp. “Shit!” 

He doesn’t understand at first, not until he sees her take off after Steve. She’s not the only one.

The other team’s defenseman, the one Steve had warned them about, is closing in on Rogers and Bucky knows that Steve could still make it to the goal if someone cuts off the damn ice-skating skyscraper heading his way. But there’s no one there because Bucky told them not to focus on that and the distance between the two is getting smaller and smaller.

“Get him, Colossus!” Bucky hears Kitty yell and he swears under his breath, trying his best to reach Steve so he won’t get checked. He over overtakes Peggy and he nearly makes it but the other guy gets there first and Bucky sees Steve line his stick up to take the shot and he nearly does it, _he nearly fucking does it_ , and Bucky just knows without any proof or evidence that the shot would have gone in, but then Steve is being smacked against the side of the rink with a clatter, his helmet battering off the boards as the defenseman’s body slams into him and the crowd seem to echo the noise the collision makes with shocked gasps.

The other guy backs up, having been propelled by a ravenous burst of kinetic energy and momentum, and he immediately takes off his helmet, revealing a shocked face that definitely hadn’t meant to cause this much damage.

“Outta the way,” Morita says, pushing the guy away and kneeling down next to Steve who’s a crumpled heap on the ice, unmoving with a cracked helmet.

Bucky skids to a halt, breath catching in his throat because all he can see is a fourteen-year-old Steve, lying on the ice, having been pushed down so many times they’ve both lost count. But he always gets up.

“Come on, Rogers. Get up,” he urges, under his breath and Peggy also reaches Steve and drops down next to him.

There’s the slightest hint of movement from Steve and then he’s slowly pushing himself up onto all fours and Bucky’s sigh of relief leaves him in one quick breath. With the help of Peggy, Steve removes his helmet and there’s a trickle of blood running down the side of his face but other than that he seems pretty lucid and relatively unharmed.

Quickly, Bucky skates over, leaning down with a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Steve?”

He doesn’t know what he expects, but it isn’t Steve roughly shoving his hand away and glaring up at him. “ _Fuck off, Barnes_.”

There’s a venom in Steve’s voice that Bucky has never heard before and it catches him off guard. He retracts his hand immediately and stares as Steve eventually gets to his feet and drives a finger into the middle of Bucky’s chest.

“I _told you_ I needed someone to cover me,” he spits. 

“Look, Steve, I get it, but…”

“No, you don’t get to throw a ‘but’ at me right now. You’re so up your own damn ass, you can’t let anyone else suggest something. We could have won, but you’re too damn stubborn to let that happen!”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Rogers.”

“Bucky, he’s _bleeding_ ,” Peggy points out, her arm around Steve’s waist as if she’s helping to hold him up.

“You would never have had the puck if we hadn’t gone with my idea in the first place,” Bucky argues, not wanting to lose the game _and_ this argument.

“If someone had tailed that guy I could have had us winning by _two_ right now.”

“Oh, real cocky.”

“You _arrogant_ piece of…” He trails off.

“Don’t stop there, Stevie!” Bucky laughs, finishing it off with a condescending pat on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s hear hockey’s Golden Boy prove he isn’t so pure after all.”

The shove is delivered to his chest quickly and without warning and he stumbles backwards and only barely manages to regain his footing so he can shove Steve right back, pushing past the guilt and the obvious signs that he’s the one at fault here to make way for his usual stubbornness and hatred for being proven wrong.

They’re about to break out into a full-on tussle when Phillips starts yelling at them and the final buzzer sounds and they both automatically turn to look at the scoreboard. Their loss stares back at them in huge block numbers as the X-Men gather on the ice for a celebratory pile-up.

Dejected, they have to skate back to the bench where Phillips is waiting for them, arms folded across his chest his face stormy. “You happy now?” There’s no mistaking the fact that his words are aimed at Bucky and he can’t even lift his head to look at him.

“Coach, I’m sorry, I…”

“I’m not the one you need to be apologising to. Carter, get that boy to a medic.”

Bucky is forced to watch Steve limp off the ice, his teeth gritted as he tries not to let any pain show on his face and it’s then that it fully hits Bucky just how badly he’s fucked up.

Starting forward, he reaches out a hand as if to stop Steve and Peggy. “Look, Rogers, I didn’t mean to-”

“Haven’t you done enough, James?” Peggy says, narrowing her eyes at him before her expression softens a split second afterwards. Peggy’s never been able to stay mad at him for too long even when he’s the reason their (arguably) star player is probably going to have to sit out the next game, but she still isn’t going to let him off that easily and turns her back on him, guiding Steve towards the locker room so he can get fixed up.

As they disappear, Bucky turns back around and is greeted to the sight of their supporters filtering out of the stands, heads hung low, banners wilting by their sides as him team stands there, sullen and low-spirited, their helmets in their hands.

“We’ll get ‘em next time,” Bucky promises because he doesn’t know what to say, or how to apologise.

“Yes,” Dernier agrees and Bucky is caught off-guard by how _bitter_ he sounds. “If you don’t get Steve killed by then.”

His team pass him, shouldering him roughly as they go by in single file and Bucky would rather they just punch him in the face instead. It’s becoming apparent that he deserves it. Dum Dum brings up the rear and levels Bucky with a look that makes him want to cry.

“Dum Dum… I didn’t mean…” 

Dugan raises his hand and Bucky flinches but it comes down softly on his shoulder instead. “I know,” the goalie says. “But it happened anyway.”

Bucky drops his head, jaw clenched and tears nipping at the corner of his eyes, and Dum Dum squeezes his shoulder gently before disappearing back into the locker room.

“I fucked up, right?” Bucky asks quietly, knowing Phillips will hear him anyway.

“Yeah, son,” comes the reply. “You did.”

“What am I meant to do now?”

Phillips pauses at his side on his way past. “You need to find a way to fix it.”

That’s the problem; Bucky doesn’t know _how_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was fun to write bc apparently i love it when bucky is angsty and snarky and basically full of shit. pls stay tuned!


End file.
